Well, the ethos of how long we've been on the net isn't quite as important as our rationale. I feel that the sine qua non of "social media" is user generated c

Well, the ethos of how long we've been on the net isn't quite as important as our rationale. I feel that the sine qua non of "social media" is user generated content conducted between specific users: tied to specific accounts, where users have one-to-one public conversations and those conversations are foregrounded as the site's content. I don't agree that knowing who has up/down voted a comment is as fundamental as the fact that the sites' content -is- the comment. And while the system doesn't foreground user accounts, I have often found it helpful to look at a user's contributions to better understand their commentary. Finally, the fact that it's entirely possible to implement a "friends" list or a "feed" based on search results (and that this would apply to the foregrounded content of the site) seems to me to indicate that there's not just a social aspect to the content here, but that this is, in fact a social media site. I mean, I could search user reviews on IMBD, amazon, or the wiki, but I've never found that to be in line with how I use those sites... here the conversations are the entire reason I use the site. That user generated content is the whole thing for me.